The Government has issued tender documents for the upgrading of the M50 to relieve the notorious traffic bottleneck at the Red Cow roundabout in Dublin. Liam Reid reports.
The 200 million construction project to add two new lanes on a stretch of the M50 could begin before the ring road is completed.
It will also see the construction of two "spaghetti junctions" at the N4 roundabout and the Red Cow Roundabout - the first of their kind in the State.
In recent years, the Red Cow roundabout has become a notorious traffic black-spot, causing delays of up to an hour during holiday rush-hour periods.
The new project comes as figures released yesterday showed a record number of vehicles using the Westlink toll bridge on the M50. According to National Toll Roads, which owns the bridge, vehicle numbers for the first three months of this year are 10 per cent greater than the same period last year.
In one week last month, the bridge handled a record number of vehicle movements - 600,000 - for a seven-day period.
On March 2nd, a record 7,800 vehicles were processed in one hour through the bridge.
NTR executives warned that although the bridge had sufficient capacity to deal with the volume of traffic on the ring road, sections of it were now running the risk of almost constant day-time traffic jams.
The company expected further significant growth in vehicle numbers on the road over the coming years, with record use expected this summer. Mr Tony McClafferty, the managing director of NTR's roads division, said unless immediate action was taken to upgrade the M50, the current situation was "a recipe for tailbacks".
"The Westlink bridge is now the widest section of the motorway with four lanes each way," he said. "There are sections of the road with only two lanes, and they are now at capacity."
He said the completion of the final leg of the road, the South Eastern Motorway between Ballinteer and Loughlinstown, and the Port Tunnel, will add thousands of more cars and trucks onto the road.
While welcoming the first phase of the upgrade, he said the entire road needed to be upgraded to cater for the projected traffic volumes.
The Government rejected a proposal from NTR to finance the entire upgrading of the ring road, opting instead to separate it into two phases.
A spokesman for the Department of Transport said it was hoped that construction on the first phase between the N4 and N7 could begin by the end of next year, as few planning issues and environmental objections were expected because it was an upgrading of an existing road.
This could occur before the completion of the final section of the ring road, which is now expected at the end of 2005 and which has been held up by the dispute over the archaeological remains at Carrickmines.